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Gravy Soup

A hearty beef soup with herbs, spices, vermicelli, and vegetables, served with a French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash and soak the leg of beef.

  2. Break the bone.

Make the soup

  1. Place the beef in a saucepan with water, sweet herbs, sliced onions, mace, cloves, allspice, and black pepper.

  2. Stew until the soup reaches your desired richness.

  3. Remove the meat and let it cool.

  4. Take off the fat.

  5. Heat the soup.

  6. Add vermicelli, boiled celery, cayenne, and salt.

  7. Optionally, add carrot, turnip, and spinach.

  8. Stir in soy sauce and mushroom ketchup.

Serve

  1. Serve with a hot French roll in the soup.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Leg of beef
Gives the soup its meaty flavour and rich body as it stews.
Celery
Adds a fresh, savoury vegetable flavour to the finished soup.
Vermicelli
Thin pasta that adds bulk and a soft texture to the soup.
French roll
Soaks up broth, adding soft bread body when served in the soup.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury, salty depth and a darker colour to the broth.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury umami flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Take off the fat. Fat rises to the surface of a stewed broth and can make it greasy and heavy on the palate. Chilling or skimming it off before reheating gives a cleaner, more refined soup.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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